Wrongful Death Onboard Airline Flights

People normally associate wrongful death with car accidents or nursing home neglect. Wrongful death is when someone dies because of what or how another person or entity acts, such as drunk driving or medical malpractice. In a wrongful death suit, the survivors of the deceased have the right to sue the responsible party.

Passengers who die while onboard malfunctioning aircraft or as a consequence of the incompetence of its crew may be said to have died wrongfully. In such instances, there was no intent to kill; the death were accidents. However, they could have probably been prevented with more diligence on the part of the airline in maintaining the aircraft, or training flight crews. The general opinion is that these dangers are foreseeable, and that makes airlines liable when these kinds of things happen, which seems to be more and more common these days. This means airlines must compensate the families of crash victims. The Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (Montreal Convention) caps the recovery per victim at €143,000 if the airline is found liable.